Basic English for technical students

The objective of this massive open online course is to acquaint engineering students with technical and scientific discourse, especially the specific vocabulary and grammatical structures found in texts related to their field of study. Additionally, students will be provided with practice in the four skills necessary to comprehend and express themselves in scientific and technical communicative situations.

The degree of complexity of the included materials presupposes the presence of a basic formation of foreign language communicative competence of students. The MOOC consists of introduction, 5 modules, exercises, and list of references.

The structure of all modules is the same. Each module includes pre-watching tasks, reading texts, post reading tasks, vocabulary and writing exercises. Work on the text is preceded by lexical exercises. All exercises are selected taking into account the specialty and future profession of students. The course contains the language material necessary for teaching students the skills of various types of reading, writing, speaking and communicative grammar. Each of the modules includes texts on a specific specialty. The texts are selected from the materials of modern authentic manuals, special books and Internet resources. Post-text exercises (exercises for the detailed development of lexical and grammatical material) are aimed at developing speech skills and abilities on this subject. A variety of tasks, correlated with each stage of mastering the topic and working with the text provides the opportunity to learn various types of speech activity.

The materials presented in this MOOC can be used both in the course of independent work of students on a foreign language, and in practical classes under the guidance of a teacher.

I believe that this academic course will be useful and interesting for university students in their career, because they will be able to practice English both in their professional and in everyday life.